“Um.”
“Got all the numbers off the phones and sent the phones by courier to the FBI.”
“They’ll be pleased.”
She eyed me. “Why do I have a feeling you shouldn’t have grabbed that stuff?”
“It was an illegal arrest. No search warrant. No arrest warrant. Any half-decent lawyer can probably get the evidence suppressed, if there is any, and get Chu off … if he ever comes to trial. They have him on a national security hold right now, incommunicado.”
“So why didn’t you let the FBI get a warrant?”
“We don’t have a week for them to dither. If a nuke goes off in Norfolk, the judge scrutinizing the affidavits and FBI agents standing in front of him will feel the floor shake and think there has been an earthquake. Poof, another million or two souls on their way up or down.”
“So what did Grafton say about it?”
“Nothing to me. He might tomorrow, or he might not. With Grafton, you never know. You take a risk and everything turns out okay, he’s happy. If I’d gotten Jerry Chu arrested on my say-so and nothing was found, not so happy.”
“We still don’t know if he’s dirty.”
“Oh, he is. I got a good look at his face.” I yawned and stretched. “But if they want to fire me, I’m ready to go.”
She opened the wine bottle, poured for the both of us and handed me a glass. After she had an experimental sip, she asked, “If they fire you, where would you go?”
“I don’t know. Haven’t thought much about it. Maybe trade the Benz in on a used motorcycle and just hit the road. There’s a lot of America I haven’t seen. There are days when I think I ought to be out there in the middle of it while it’s still America.”
She looked at me and I looked at her.
“When is Anna’s funeral?”
“There won’t be one. They released her remains and I had them cremated. She was in tiny little pieces.” I had to swallow a couple of times. “I’m picking up the ashes tomorrow at ten and taking them to Hot Springs, Virginia. Gonna scatter them there. We had good times there, at the Homestead. I think she would have approved.”
Sarah was watching me over the rim of her glass. After a bit she said, “The doctors amputated Fish’s arm yesterday. Not enough circulation to his lower arm.”
I didn’t say anything. Just stood holding the wineglass, wishing I had killed the bastard.
“Tommy?”
“Your key is on the counter,” I said, trying to keep my voice normal. “I’m not hungry. How about a rain check?”
I placed my glass of wine, still full, on the counter. Got my coat and let myself out.
Lieutenant Commander Zhang of the People’s Liberation Army Navy also saw the television news feature about the “routine security exercise” at the Norfolk naval base, and although he didn’t understand most of the English, the footage of a carrier coming into the carrier piers captured his attention. He resolved to buy a newspaper in the morning and have Choy Lee translate it for him. He was becoming more and more concerned about Choy’s fixation upon Sally Chan, the daughter of the man who owned the restaurant, yet he still needed his translation skills. For a little while, anyway.
Zhang wondered what Choy had told Sally. Had he compromised the mission? Whispered secrets had a way of spreading quickly, like wildfire in dry grass.
He automatically fingered his cell phone, which was charging on his nightstand, and lit a cigarette. If Chinese agents in Washington or up and down the coast, or communications hackers in China, learned that the American navy had changed its plans and diverted carriers elsewhere, he would get an encrypted message on his iPad. Or a telephone call with a code word. Thinking about the contingencies, Zhang realized he must be ready to detonate the bomb with minimum warning. Better too early than too late. On the other hand, the richer the target, the greater the reward.
At heart Zhang was a gambler. Admiral Wu knew that, which was why he had chosen him for this mission. No panic, but a nice judgment about when to get as much as possible. That was what Wu and Zhang both wanted. That was what China needed if it was to become the major power in Asia.
He sat for a moment staring at the television with unseeing eyes, thinking of the Japanese navy’s mistakes at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. They had a great plan and they pulled it off magnificently, yet the ships they sank were battleships, obsolete weapons in the fledgling air age. The real prizes, the real strategic assets, were the U.S. Navy’s three aircraft carriers. They were at sea when the blow fell on Pearl, so were untouched. Had the Japanese ignored the battleships and waited for the carriers, or lingered to hunt the carriers in the open sea … Well, undoubtedly the war in the Pacific would have gone a lot differently, and probably better, for Japan.
The Japanese also failed to damage or destroy the aboveground storage tanks at Pearl that contained the fuel oil the fleet burned. Had they done so, the Americans would have had to transport fuel from the American West Coast and would have had no place to store it, which would have severely limited the fleet’s combat radius until new tanks could be constructed.
The Chinese plan was better than the Japanese. Today’s American carriers were all nuclear powered, but the facilities to build, repair and refuel them were in Newport News; the explosion would put that shipyard out of action for years, if not for decades.
The Japanese overestimated America’s readiness. Had they an inkling of the true state of affairs in Hawaii, they could safely have taken much greater risks and probably achieved greater, perhaps decisive, results.
Zhang didn’t think he had made Japan’s error. No, the danger here was erring the other way: underestimating the enemy’s readiness. He had only one bomb, which would do catastrophic damage, and he had taken every precaution he could.
Zhang took a last long drag on his cigarette, stubbed out the butt and lit another. Wait for the carriers, he told himself. But don’t wait too long.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
If you’re going through hell, keep going.
Kat Spiers managed to convince Harold and Ellie that they must leave. They refused to go, of course, as she had predicted, until she figuratively dropped the bomb: The Chinese were believed to have a nuclear warhead secreted at the naval base, and while the navy was looking, it might detonate at any time.
Being very human and mortal, Harold and Ellie agreed to leave. No one got any sleep that night, waiting, waiting … for the detonation. The next morning Harold called the college and pleaded a death in the family. He would return, he said, for the beginning of the next semester. Ellie e-mailed the women who were coming to the baby shower and said that, due to a death in Harold’s family, it would have to be postponed. She would let them know.
Then they packed and got on the road about noon. Kat drove. Through the Hampton Roads Tunnel and up the interstate toward Richmond. They were so frightened they didn’t relax until they were almost to Fredericksburg, when they decided to pull off and eat a late lunch at a Cracker Barrel restaurant.
The trio ate in silence, each absorbed with his or her own thoughts. Now that they were safe, relatively, the enormity of the disaster that might engulf every one of their friends weighed on them. Oh, Kat had stressed that they couldn’t tell anyone, because the information was classified and might lead to panic. Mass panic. And if the media got it, it might even cause the triggerman to detonate the weapon.
Heavy, Harold thought. Very heavy. Then he began thinking of his friends. He had a few he trusted, friends he knew who wouldn’t tell anyone else, who would appreciate the opportunity to escape. If they knew. And what if he didn’t tell them and the bomb went off? How would he live with that? It is one thing, he thought, to take your wife and her unborn child to safety, but leaving your friends to die when it would be so easy to warn them?